AUT INVENIAM VIAM AUT FACIAM

Reagan Swept Into Office, and Hell Followed With Him

From Slate: “Obama stood firm and won the first tax agreement in two decades that is tilted in favor of the middle class rather than the wealthy.”

The FIRST. In TWO DECADES.

And yet millions of idiots will beat you to shit for saying our political system is fucking atrocious. Read the above! Care to argue the point?

Makes me want to dig up Reagan and and smash in his skull. Or, rather, the decomposing thing Reagan once was.

It was Reagan, the most evil president in US history — who is responsible for failing public schools, inadequate mental health care, prisons everywhere filled with black men, other minorities, and a white guy who killed his grandmother by gnawing her face off in a police station. White people go away for violence. Minorities go away for anything.

And drug crimes are why most people who are in jail are in jail. Petty drug crimes. Because winning a “War On Drugs” would mean a war with all nations south of our border. …Better to let said “war” window-dress the racist, class-ist policies of the justice system.

NYC is providing free housing to thousands of black men busted on possession charges. How? Here’s one particularly disgusting way. Cops began a program that worked like this: Police walked about the city telling black men to turn out their pockets. Some police did it for them….In which case, I cannot imagine how this was done without technical molestation.

Anyway: If they found a joint, they made an arrest. An unidentified pill, arrest. Capone’s Gold? They kept that one to themselves.

Which was not the result of someone “dropping some ball” or of “crossed lines of communication” or my god whatever. For the stop and search — Sorry. First I should write that the stop itself is illegal, since it had no cause, unless police were willing to list “black guy” as cause. …A violation of the law anyway. And after the stop, the search had no basis. The police easily committed the more heinous offenses in these matters: Their crimes were fucking unconstitutional.

A police program that results in a lot of black men being getting arrested, and maybe a token Mexican for the appearance of fairness, could only have been designed specifically to arrest a lot of black men. You don’t hit almost 100 percent black guys by aiming at white ones.

And the program was, indeed, found to have been illegal. Guess who’s still in jail?

Similarly, our prisons aren’t filled to the rafters with black men by some goddam coincidence. The judicial system is designed to lock up black men.

How can one explain 13 percent of the US population being “relocated” to the shittiest public housing available any other way?

For a decade or two crack meant lotsa jail, and coke meant probation if you were white. Of course, crack is simply cocaine in crystalline form. And crack could be cocaine if reduced from said form. So coke is coke is coke.

Therefore, the difference in how cocaine (powder) possession was treated by the law versus cocaine (crystals) never had a tiny bit of justification.

…But isn’t crack worse? Is the question from the back.

Crack is smoked (as is cocaine powder, in 51s). This means it affects people faster, and with more Kapowza… A person can smoke more coke in five minutes than they are liable to snort, and snorted coke isn’t absorbed immediately, but over time.

The bigger initial high is what the government panicked the country about when I was very young. That it came on stronger and faster made it, ipso facto, deadlier and more addictive.

Not sure where the facts are on this, but the next update will come with stats. …In a new post. This thing is a goddam monster as it is.

Up front asks when the laws re cocaine were enacted. Almost exactly when law enforcement recognized that crack use was more prevalent among black people.

Penalties for drug offenses have swelled ridiculously. And mandatory minimums, which prohibit judges from judging, deal only with drug offenses.

That is: Some crimes are so serious, matters of sentencing cannot be left to judges. The robed ones simply do what the decoder ring says. They input the crime the defendant is found guilty of and output the predetermined sentence that must be given. …And sometimes the ring instead spells out “Drink more Ovaltine.” (The fact that people have been judged for about twenty years only according to offense and mandated minimum, and that blacks make up almost all of every jail means the system has the bigotry way down deep.)

Drug offenses are this heinous. Offenses involving, ninety percent of the time, a person’s stash for personal use. And therefore, a victimless crime. …But what about the cartels in Mexico chopping off blah blah blah? Asks the kid everyone wishes could shut up. Exactly. Those are the real criminals. Regardless, considering the child labor and sweatshop conditions and slave wages etc etc etc that went into whatever you’re wearing, if you buy your drugs from a local supplier, you’re a saint until you put your Nikes on and grab the iPod.

(Please note: I don’t do drugs, nor do I condone their use. I have used them in the past, but never became addicted to anything. Why? Because only one percent of people in the US are of the personality type likely to become addicted. I’m in the ninety-nine.)

In case you skip the parentheticals (you learn quickly), I’ll repeat this: The scourge of drug addiction hasonly and willalwaysonly directly affect one percent of the US population. One percent. This number has remained unchanged since it was first obtained, which was before even I was born. (In the Long Long Ago.)

Which begs the question: What is the big fucking deal? Why does the government actively create more problems than it attempts to “solve”? (One example: What do gangs fight over? Square feet. Why is real estate so valuable to them? Because they sling dope there. I wonder if the kind of gangs seen in musicals would exist if drugs were legalized. …Kids! Put down the pipe! Take up Tap!)

Why not at least let the residents of certain states (where applicable) sell and smoke weed without fear? The federal government should issue… something legally binding that prohibits federal prosecution of pot growing/drying/hybridizing/possessing/smoking/etc etc in certain states (where applicable).

But that won’t happen because a government isn’t about to rescind any authority it has. In the Bush II years I bored people by insisting the tax cuts, once passed, would not ever “simply” be repealed. And Guantanamo, once let loose, wasn’t going back in the evil drawer. Nor “extraordinary rendition.” (As in: Did you hear of the guy some US agency abducted from [insert sovereign nation, US excluded]? I read he was almost starved to death by [do it again]. Isn’t that fucking extraordinary?!) Last of all the aerial drones.

Thanks to the drones and the style of modern warfare, the US needs the CIA, the Marines, helicopters, two aircraft carriers with heaps of Google Targeting-equipped smart bombs and missiles (sorry Google, but the government never would have thought of a single practical purpose for its spy satellites, other than to follow each person’s every move, had you not issued Google Earth), and whatever little else.

The point is the current Congress says we must cut entitlements. An entitlement is: “a right to benefits specified especially by law or contract.” (m-w). If we trim some words up there, we come up with “Congress must cut a right.” That is, the legislature absolutely has to fuck over the poor, elderly, disabled, so forth.

Meanwhile, the defense budget is sacrosanct. Nevermind that, “including non-DOD expenditures, military spending was approximately 28–38% of budgeted expenditures and 42–57% of estimated tax revenues.” (Wiki). Since 2000, the DOD has eaten up half of all discretionary spending.

Medicare and Medicaid use twenty-three percent of the budget (2010 figures).

…I don’t think these programs belong in the budget. (If war spending doesn’t make it, why not two of the best programs this country ever instituted?) Why? Because people who are using Medicare and/or Medicaid already have paid for them. (Payroll tax.) So the money the US is “spending” as part of the budget is money it already has been given. That is, these programs are designed to cost nothing when individuals use them because they will have already paid for them.

Also, the military still likes subs and cluster bombs (the gift that’ll keep on giving, Afghanistan!) and marching one group of people into another group of people, each sworn to kill the other. When it comes to “boots on the ground,” the action isn’t too different from the American Revolution. It’s always certain people against certain others. Today people kill each other from a distance much greater than the Brits did back in the 1700s. That’s all.

(And I must note: What an impressive feat. Britain made people willing and able to march in a line a stone’s throw from the people killing them, then discharge their arms in an orderly fashion. …Well done UK. You wasted a lot of lives for stupid reasons in stupid ways and looked stupid doing it.)

THAT IS! There’s a hell of a lot that could be cut from the defense budget that is not. Going back to Bush II, I’m sure we still have infrastructure related to his Hit A Bullet With Another Bullet Fired Miles Below, aka Missile Defense. Why can’t it work? Consider the variables that affect one missile’s accuracy and, therefore, flight path. Now imagine another missile, but its target isn’t a metropolis: it’s a projectile the size of a silo.

And: If missiles could be intercepted, planes have far more accurate weapons than the goddam lunacy Bush II got away with.

THE POINT BEING! Drug crimes are so bad they called for mandatory minimums. Not violent crimes. A schizophrenic serial killer can be put in a psych ward until he’s well enough to rejoin society, should he ever be. Not so for a schizo who got pinched for doing nonprescribed drugs. He’ll likely be force-fed his proper medication at the proper times by prison staff. This is close enough to what a mental hospital does, yeah?

Coming ’round back to addicts: mandatory minimums has sent thousands upon thousands of them to prison. Which is to say: They were/are/will be locked up for what is recognized by the medical community as a motherfucking disease.

Let’s go from Point A to Number Eight.

[SCENE, COURTROOM]

JUDGE: Before we begin this trial , I need to speak to the prosecution in chambers.

Mr Prosecutor, the court has unintentionally been exposed to materials that would seem to establish that you have cancer.

PROSECUTOR: May I ask where you get your gossip?

JUDGE: The New York Times.

PROSECUTOR: OK. …Now, what if this tidbit about me was Judith Miller-ed?

JUDGE: You’re not the president, at war, nor trading access for published lies.

The court would have been much more content never to have know anything about your personal life, Mr Prosecutor, as I am not entitled to. The fact remains, however, that I was made aware of it, and the court cannot ignore it because it may end this discussion by placing you under arrest.

PROSECUTOR: Arrest? Your honor–

JUDGE: Are you, or are you not, in possession of a malignant tumor characteristic of cancer?

PROSECUTOR: At this time I shall exercise my fifth–

JUDGE:Before you end that sentence, know doing so means the court must have you taken into custody.

PROSECUTOR: I have seen no evidence against me. I can’t even imagine why the Times would have mentioned me.

JUDGE: You were interviewed as you left a chemotherapy co-op. Monday of this week. In which case you’re recklessly endangering everyone near you, radioactive as you are.

PROSECUTOR: OK. …But you see my case against the Times, right? Were my rights not violated, you would not know what you — think — you now know.

JUDGE: Yes, I’ll be precluded from using this evidence years after it’s been used. Certainly. But I am bound to use it no matter what we see in out crystal ball. Right now, I must ask you if you are in possession–

PROSECUTOR: With respect, I cannot answer.

JUDGE: Gregory! Please enter!

The prosecutor is under arrest for possession of an illegal disease.

PROSECUTOR: There is no hard evidence of that! The Times may have printed the wrong name for all we know! I can’t be locked up with this nonsense!

JUDGE: The law mandates that reasonable suspicion of such a crime be acted on, and the evidence of it collected simultaneously.

PROSECUTOR: But–!

JUDGE: Hey, if ExxonMobil can be a Senator!

…Excuse me. I’m sure the police will collect enough pills and whatnot during your booking to more than show cause for a body scan.

And that will answer my question.

PROSECUTOR: I know these damned tricks, your honor! I invented some! And my cases that hinged on evidence like this will be overturned whenever the lazy asses on defense file an appeal!

JUDGE: Is it the irony you object to?

PROSECUTOR: It’s the obvious fact that a scan forces my person to testify against itself, not in words, but in images!

JUDGE: Perhaps just so. But all these matters will be litigated in due time.

PROSECUTOR: I’ll be dead without my treatment well before “due time.”

JUDGE: Sir, the court is not responsible for your harboring of a deadly disease!

[SCENE]

Eh. Kinda regret that. It could have been more.

And this post used to contain more typing, but it was oh so much crap.